Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey, welcome back to Grow Tential. I am Sarah, and I'm with my awesome dad, Doc. How you doing?
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I'm doing good. How are you today?
[00:00:13] Speaker A: I'm great. So we created this podcast two years ago. A year ago. How long have we been doing this?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: I'll have to look back at about 32 years ago.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Feels like it sometimes, doesn't it?
But the idea was that we really, since I've been a little girl, you have talked about growing into your full potential.
And so this podcast is designed around the idea that as we're learning and growing, we want to help you learn and grow so that we can grow into the full potential of who God created us to be. I love that idea. And so I. I enjoy this time with you more than I can say.
I think it's a gift.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Thank you. I enjoy it also.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: I appreciate you.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: You're a good girl.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Thanks, dad.
So we left off. We are in this series of helping us define our emotions. Because when you can define your emotions, you are able to move through life in a healthier way. Not suppressing, not letting everything come out as one big, bad emotion, but knowing the emotion, identifying it, and then moving forward in healthy ways. So we left off last month with the idea of loss of sadness, and we separated the idea from sadness and grief.
And so today we want to dig in a little bit into grief.
And it is the Christmas scene season when this will be airing. So I think it's. It can be a helpful tool because grief seems to poke its head around the holidays when you're really missing the people that you've lost.
So I think it's a good time for this, even though it's not what I expected we'd be talking about around Christmas.
I would love to know who is somebody that you lost that maybe was the most influential person in your life or that grief hit hard when you lost that person?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Well, I would say it was probably my mentor, Dr. Douglas.
He died in his mid-60s, and he was very influential in my life, and I did his funeral and made me very sad.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you do the funeral of someone that means so much to you? How did you get through that one?
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Well, you've heard my saying we cry strong.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah, I'm a crier.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: If we have to cry, we cry strong.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Not easy.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Not easy.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Not easy.
When we think about grief, I think it's our first inclination to go to the loss of a loved one.
But what Brene Brown has done really beautifully in her book the Atlas of the Heart is. She's made kind of four different categories of grief. And I'd love to talk about him with you today. Would you give us that first definition of her grief idea of grief?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Well, this actually comes from Professor Niemeyer, as she quotes him.
Grief is a central process.
Let me start that over again. A central process in grieving is the attempt to. Here's the two important words. To reaffirm or reconstruct a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss.
So the grief process is a process whereby I reaffirm or I reconstruct my life after I've lost something that I hold very dear.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: In this same chapter, she talks about this idea of, like, pervasiveness, that there are things that touch every piece of your life.
And so there is this idea in grief that.
Let's say it is the idea of someone you lost.
It reshapes your entire life. It touches everything.
And like when you lost Dr. Douglas, how did you.
How did you reshape your life? What did that do for you?
Well, I ask questions so poorly.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: The person. You do just fine. You do just fine. All right. The biggest change was he was my mentor. I mean, I could call him up and I could say, all right, I'm facing this challenge, or I'm not sure how to deal with this, or I can't. I'm trying to learn this. Do you have any.
Do you have any suggestions?
And I also lost someone I trusted.
So he had my permission to say anything he wanted to me.
I mean, he had my.
And he would. He would say, look, you got to be more. You got to be more gentle or stop being a Yankee.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: What did that mean?
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Well, he was from Texas, you know, and Yankees are more blunt than he was used to.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Gotcha.
So. So how did you cope with that, dad? How did you.
How did you experience that grief then? How did you.
How old were you when that happened?
[00:06:42] Speaker B: 30.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Young.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Young.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Too young, that's for sure.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah. That's sad.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: I still have his picture on my desk at my church office.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: This. It gives me a stomachache every time. Because when I was a little girl. Do you remember this story that I'm about to tell you?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: No.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Legitimately gives me a stomachache.
When I was a little girl. You had a little wallet sized picture of him. Is this the picture you're referring to?
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Okay.
Oh, Jesus. I.
You had a pen sitting next to it. I must have been seven or eight years old. We were at our house in old Brooklyn, and I took that pen and I Wanted to see how that pen wrote. It looked so beautiful and so smooth. And I just had to open it and make a line. And I drew on your picture of Dr. Douglas. If you see that little picture, to this day, there will be a line from that bed.
Yeah.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: You should have not readied yourself out.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: What a jerk. Every time we talk about Dr. Douglas, I actually feel that in the pit of my stomach as an adult woman.
I apologize.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: No problem.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: I apologize. As we talk about this said story again, I find a way to make it about me.
Truly a gift, you know?
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Okay, well, I'd rather laugh about it than cry about it.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Okay, so you had to. You had to find new mentors. You had to find new ways of existing. I mean, you. You are my mentor. So I know that feeling. I know that feeling of I can call you for absolutely anything. And it is like sa safety net of trust, a safety net of my dad will know how to handle this.
And so I. I can feel it viscerally when you say that.
So for people that have experienced this loss and it's touched everything in your life, there is.
It's almost like you have to rebuild.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: And.
And I'd love to kind of let that shape the. This podcast of how do you rebuild?
Okay, what are her four definitions there?
[00:09:04] Speaker B: All right, so this comes.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Grief comes in all kinds of packages. It's not just the loss of a loved one that.
So this kind of helps us think about it in a broader way. Ah.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: So I want to explain. We are in the. I'm in the learning process, too.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: I'm reading this book to learn.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: So we're sharing what we're learning.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah. We're not Brene Brown. We're not the expert.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: So as we learn from her, that's what we're sharing. And we're letting her guide our thoughts, but we're applying it to our own world.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: So it starts with this idea of acute grief. That's what you feel in the. In the moment of the loss.
And Sarah, you said something I want to emphasize again. Okay.
Grief isn't just about losing somebody I love.
I can also grieve over the loss of other things I can grieve over.
I've seen people have acute grief in a divorce.
I've seen people have acute grief over families that have not divorced, but they have not lived up to their promises.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Okay.
So acute grief.
Is that what. Is what we feel in the moment of the loss?
[00:11:04] Speaker A: It's like the impact.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: And it. And, and it can be disorienting.
It can.
Reveals itself in different people in different ways.
People process grief differently.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: So maybe somebody in acute grief, they're just stunned to silence.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Maybe another person in a grief, they just can't stop crying.
Maybe another person in acute grief, they feel the need to just be active, just keep doing something.
So the acute grief is what we feel.
In the moment of the loss.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. And it is disorienting.
Disorienting? Is that the word you are.
Because I've honestly, by the grace of God, never lost someone yet that upheaved my world by the grace of God.
We lost Grandma, but she had dementia for so long that it was a gift for her to go be with Jesus. You know, we lost our nephew very young. He was 18 in a car accident. And that hurt so badly. But we were distant, so I didn't know him the way I would one of my sisters or my mom or dad. So there is a. There's a blessing that I've had. But I've known different kinds of grief.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: That take your breath away, that reorient your life.
And it's funny because you say this acute. It's like that impact. And there are key things that, like in my marriage, I. I can see the scene. You know what I mean?
I can.
I can be back in that moment in a minute. Because it is so. It changes everything.
And.
And so I think for most people, it's just.
We see you, you know, like we see you. It is. It is a reality in life, and you can't always.
No one escapes grief.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Nobody escapes grief.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, what's the next idea?
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Well, then there is the idea of complicated grief.
Complicated grief is the idea that something interferes with.
With me reaffirming or restructuring my life.
And the grief doesn't get processed, and it becomes complicated. It becomes.
It expresses itself in a whole variety of unhealthy ways.
We get stuck and.
We.
Sometimes it's this idea that I'm sure the person I love is not dead and they'll be home tomorrow.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: You wake up and you forget, and it hits you all over. Yeah, I hear that. Yeah.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
So complicated grief is what we want to avoid.
We want to have a healthy process of affirming and reconstructing so that the grief doesn't come to define us.
We define the grief. The grief does not define us.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: I like this quote.
It says, when we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending.
And I think sometimes grief can shape your story.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: But this is. The reconstructing of. It is part of my story, and I will not deny it. And it might have reshaped my life, but it doesn't define the ending.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Okay, good.
What do you got next?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Then? The next one is probably the hardest.
This is disenfranchised grief.
This is the kind of grief that isn't acknowledged.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: This is the kind of grief that people give us the worst advice on.
So somebody, for example, there's a terrible divorce, and someone will say, you're lucky to be in a new period of your life.
So what's happening is the grief is not being acknowledged.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: We talked about this, too, with the idea of miscarriages.
It's the loss of something that you so hoped for.
It's the loss of something that you often keep private and so no one knows the pain you're carrying.
And it can be so overlooked.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think so many of us can relate to. To that feeling of grief.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Right.
So in disenfranchised grief, there's no reaffirming and no reconstructing either, because it is.
It's marginalized.
People give us bad advice like it could be worse.
Do you know what I mean?
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Well, and then you tell yourself that, and then you believe the crappy advice, and then. Yeah. You're now shoving emotions down and trying to put the mask on, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: As we learn to label the emotions.
Okay. I love the last definition that we're going to do because I think it helps us begin to shape every ounce of grief that we're feeling. So if it is the loss of a loved one, if it's a divorce, if it's the loss of a dream or a company or a baby, this is how we start to shape things. And what's it called?
[00:18:09] Speaker B: It's called integrated grief.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: And this is what we're striving for, where we acknowledge the grief, we acknowledge the loss, we acknowledge the yearning that goes with all of that.
But we integrated it in. We integrated into a healthy life.
It becomes part of my life story.
I'm able to integrate this into what the kind of life I have lived and how I have lived it. Yeah, we're not denying it.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: We're not. We're not suppressing it, but we're integrating it into.
This is a normal human life.
In every normal human life, there is grief.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: The cost of love.
Yes, it is the cost of love.
Mom was just saying, like, when you experience that grief, it never fully goes away. No, you just learn to live with it.
And that's what this integration process looks like.
When you think about how, like, faith in God and trust in God in.
In the Bible, it's inescapable that, you know, good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people. That's not the Bible at all. No, at all.
And in fact, it's a lot of times the exact opposite. All our heroes, all the people we look to, all the stories they have, they have experienced loss and suffering, and it is part of the human condition in God's world.
And when you think about that, dad, how does that start to shape or help you integrate grief?
[00:20:08] Speaker B: You know, I believe that Christ is the prototype.
He is the example.
And even our Lord Jesus Christ had to deal with grief.
In the garden, he said, the my soul is surrounded by sorrow, even to the point of death.
And then he modeled what to do.
He prayed.
And he didn't just model that I should pray, he modeled how I should pray in grief.
And he modeled prayers of trust. And he said, not my will, but your will be done.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I can you. In our last podcast and in the sermon you had did on the first attribute of God, that he is trustworthy. Yeah.
You defined trust. Could you define it again here?
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Yes.
When I trust, I feel what I value the most is in safe hands.
If I trust God, then what I value the most, I feel like is safe with him.
And see how this fits grief.
I love this person. I love them so much, I can't bear to lose them.
But in trust, I say to God, I.
Feel safe with these people being in your hands.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
And it is.
I heard my. So my daughter, Lex, she's in her master's program for. I think she changed it, but it's at a seminary that we are partnered with and the professor talked about, and we'll get your take on this in a polite kind of way, that Christians never truly should grieve, they should never truly experience that, because we know ultimately that the ones we love are with Christ or, you know, in heaven.
And I'm sure he has a lot more to say about that. And I might be taking it out of context, but the idea that there is that reality of I do trust that that is real, but there's also the reality of a great loss in our life, a sadness that we don't get to see that person while we're still here, or, you know, a grief of, you know, what could have been.
So what's your take on.
Yeah.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Paul didn't say don't grieve.
He said, we don't grieve the way the pagans grieve.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: We don't grieve in hopelessness.
But he didn't say don't grieve.
Grief is.
Grief is a natural human emotion.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: So I don't grieve in hopelessness, but I do grieve.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Right.
It kind of connects to our last podcast. We grieve and hope, you know, because there is. There is a life that still exists. There is still a pathway that we have to walk and move forward, but it's this integrating of part of the human experience, you know?
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: That is inescapable.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Grief finds a healthy place in my life.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: I. I asked my mom if she would do this podcast, but I asked her 30 seconds before we went on. So don't know why she wouldn't do it, but she.
I don't know. There's a richness in Mom's character that is. I would love for more people to hear and know her fully because she has such a trust in God and such a scope and fullness in her character that is so beautiful, I will.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Need binoculars to see her in heaven. She'll be on the front row, and I'll be in the bleachers.
I'll be nudging the guy next to me saying, you won't believe it. That was my life.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: So true. We'll all be there. If you're in the bleachers, I don't even know where I'll be.
But she was saying that part of her healing process and the grief was not just thinking about the sadness or the loss or the impact, but thinking about the impact that that person had on her life. And I think it was her mom and thinking about the good and thinking about the beauty and just the blessing of her in her life.
Have you used that before?
[00:25:22] Speaker B: I'm a firm believer. I can't change what I'm thinking, but I can add to it. We've talked about this on several occasions.
So I will think something or I'll think in a way I don't want to think. And I'll say, but that's not the whole story.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: There's also this is, I think, my favorite life lesson from you is it's part of the story.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: It's not the whole story. And you do it so eloquently with our sin and our ugliness, where I want to make it all who I am.
And you say no, that's only part of the story.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: And then you connect it to Christ in a bigger way. So explain this. In the act of grief. So what do you mean by that?
[00:26:09] Speaker B: So in grief, I have a tendency to focus on what's most painful.
It's pressing on a bruise. All right.
But I also have the capacity to say I also remember.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's like an act of cherishing.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
So I remember the day I got the call that Doc died, and that can leave me feeling pretty hollow. But then I can also remember being in his theology classes. I can also remember riding in his car to basketball games.
The school had a basketball team.
I have all these other fond memories.
So I can. I can connect these other fond memories with the unpleasant memory.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. And I think we should end this podcast here, because I think that is the beauty and integration is. If you had to do it all over again, I think you probably would have still chosen the same path. Like, if.
If it's, you know, deep grief of someone you lost and loved, would you not choose them all over again? Of course you would.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: And so it's the. The act, then, of rebuilding and integrating in your life the moments that you cherish, the things that were most beautiful, most lovely.
And, yes, we grieve. Yes, there is a loss. Yes, there is a hole that maybe is there forever, but it is part of the story. It's not all of it.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: And so this holiday season, as many of you may experience these hits, these hits that impact. Right.
I challenge you to find the moments that you cherish, to find the memories that make you feel most loved and most beautiful and most alive.
Good.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Good.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: All right. Well, I love you. Thank you so much.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: I love you, friend.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: We.
We hope this is helpful. So if you have found this helpful or this to be something that you think someone else might need to hear, we ask that you like it, that you review us, and that you even share it with a friend.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
